captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> i would betray my duty to you, and to the country we love, if i ever sent you into harm's way simply because i saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed to be fixed. >> woodruff: at west point today, president obama re- affirmed his vision of a muscular-but-methodical u.s. in world affairs, while defending his handling of crises in ukraine, syria and other hotspots. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. also ahead this wednesday, an exclusive look at race and gender diversity in silicon valley. tonight, google sheds new light on who it's hiring, and which groups are falling behind. >> woodruff: plus:

>> come, you may stand upon my back, and face your distant destiny. >> woodruff: the passing of a literary giant and cultural pioneer, whose writings gave voice to the pain of racism and sexism. we explore the life and legacy of maya angelou. those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us.

>> united healthcare-- online at uhc.com. >> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better lives. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: the storm over delays at veterans affairs hospitals intensified today. the v.a. inspector general reported on the phoenix facility, where officials allegedly falsified wait times.

investigators found it actually took an average of 115 days for a first appointment. they also identified 1,700 veterans who weren't on the official waiting list at all. the report concluded similar problems are systemic throughout v.a. hospitals. president obama called the findings extremely troubling. republicans, including arizona senator john mccain, went further. >> these allegations are not just administrative problems, these are criminal problems. we need the fbi and the department of justice to be involved in this investigation. >> ifill: mccain also joined those calling for v.a. secretary eric shinseki to resign or be fired. meanwhile, the pentagon announced last night that the military will review its own health care system, which is separate from the v.a.'s. >> woodruff: in ukraine, a tense calm prevailed across the eastern city of donetsk. government troops launched an offensive there on monday, killing at least 50 pro-russian rebels.

there was no new fighting today, but about 1,000 coal miners rallied in support of the separatists. they shouted slogans and carried banners demanding that ukrainian forces withdraw from the region. >> ifill: factional fighting in libya intensified today as military jets bombed islamist militia bases. the attack in benghazi was carried out by forces loyal to a renegade former general who's vowed to crush the radicals. overnight, the state department warned americans to leave libya, saying the situation remains "unpredictable and unstable." >> woodruff: secretary of state john kerry and edward snowden, the national security agency leaker, engaged in a long- distance war of words today. it started when snowden told n.b.c. news that he had been "trained as a spy." >> i've worked for the central intelligence agency, undercover, overseas. i've worked for the national security agency, undercover,

overseas. so when they say i'm a low level systems administrator, that i don't know what i'm talking about, i'd say it's somewhat misleading. >> woodruff: kerry fired back this morning. he told c.b.s. that snowden should "man up and return from russia to the united states," to face trial. and on a.b.c., he insisted again that snowden's leaks have done serious damage. >> we have evidence that people are in additional danger because operational security has been breached, because terrorists have learned first-hand about methods and mechanisms by which the united states collects intelligence. and so, our operations have been compromised. it's plain and simple. >> woodruff: snowden is facing federal charges of stealing government property and giving out classified intelligence. >> ifill: the oldest person ever to serve in congress lost his bid last night for an eighteenth term in office. texas republican congressman ralph hall was ousted in a republican primary runoff by

former u.s. attorney john ratcliffe. hall is 91 years old. he was first elected in 1980. >> woodruff: on wall street today, the dow jones industrial average lost 42 points to close at 16,663. the nasdaq fell nearly 12 points to close at 4,225. and the s-and-p 500 slipped 2 points, to 1,909. >> ifill: still to come on the newshour; the president's vision for the u.s. in world affairs; an exclusive look at race and gender diversity at google; with the outcome certain, turnout is low in egypt's presidential election; healing the wounds from genocide in rwanda; plus, the passing of a poet, renaissance woman and literary great, maya angelou. >> woodruff: in a highly anticipated speech before hundreds of future american

military leaders, president obama pushed back against critics of his actions on the world stage today. >> the question we face, the question you will face, is not whether america will lead, but how we will lead. >> wooduff: it was a commencement speech that doubled as a defense of the president's foreign policy, and his view of america's role in the world. he addressed graduates at the u.s. military academy in west point, new york, and tried to stake out a middle ground on involving the u.s. abroad. >> today, according to self- described realists, conflicts in syria or ukraine or the central african republic are not ours to solve. a different view, from interventionists from the left and right, says we ignore these conflicts at our own peril; each side can point to history to support its claims.

but i believe neither view fully speaks to the demands of this moment. >> wooduff: the speech came at a moment when the president is under growing criticism that he's projected weakness, encouraging adversaries to take advantage. pushing back against those critics, he argued the nation must consider future steps carefully, after what he called a long season of war. >> u.s. military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance. just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. >> wooduff: instead, mr. obama called again for international organizations to play a greater role in addressing global troubles. >> there are a lot of folks, a lot of skeptics who often downplay the effectiveness of multilateral action. for them, working through

international institutions, or respecting international law, is a sign of weakness. i think they're wrong. >> wooduff: the president cited ukraine's presidential election this past weekend, and the interim nuclear agreement with iran as signs of the power of international cooperation. he spoke just a day after outlining plans to end u.s. military engagement in afghanistan. and, his west point remarks made clear the experience as commander in chief has left its mark. >> four of the service-members who stood in the audience when i announced the surge of our forces in afghanistan gave their lives in that effort. a lot more were wounded. i believe america's security demanded those deployments. but i am haunted by those deaths. i am haunted by those wounds. >> wooduff: it was 9/11 that initially triggered u.s. military action in afghanistan. but the president argued a centralized al-qaeda has since

given way to affiliates, so the u.s. must change it's approach. >> for the foreseeable future, the most direct threat to america at home and abroad remains terrorism. but a strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naive and unsustainable. >> wooduff: instead, he called for a $5 billion effort to help other countries fight terrorists. as part of that effort, the president said he would "work with congress to ramp up support" for the syrian opposition, but gave no specifics. at the same time, he insisted, the u.s. will use military force when core interests demand it, including drone strikes. but he again promised greater transparency. >> when we cannot explain our efforts clearly and publicly, we face terrorist propaganda and international suspicion; we

erode legitimacy with our partners and our people; and we reduce accountability in our own government. >> wooduff: the speech sets the stage for the president's trip to europe next week and for further debate in this year of congressional elections. >> woodruff: to dissect the president's vision of america abroad we get three views. thomas pickering was under secretary of state for political affairs during the clinton administration. he also served as u.s. ambassador to a number of countries including russia and the united nations during his long diplomatic career. elliott abrams was deputy national security advisor during the george w. bush administration. he's now a senior fellow at the council on foreign relations. and stephen walt is a professor of international affairs at harvard university's kennedy school of government. he's written extensively about u.s. foreign policy. well welcome the three of you. elliott abrams, let me start with you, what was your main reaction with what the president had to say, especially his description of how he sees the u.s. role in the world.

>> my reaction is where's the beef. this was billed as a major speech but there were no real significance changes in it, no new announcements. the president had more straw men in the speech, i think than there were caddettes in the audience. he posited that he is the golden means between the isolationists and interventionists. that's not an argument. and settinging up straw men saying other people want to send troops to sirria. i don't know anyone to do that. that's not an argument. and it is i thought disrespectful to the people in congress and in the press and in the country who are arguing about foreign policy to make believe that these are not serious arguments. >> woodruff: thomas pickering, straw men, making up an enemy? >> well, i haven't talked to elliott but i think whatever he is look at straw men, i think that is a strawman argument, myself. i think that the president's speech was a good one. i think the president came out where he should have, on

the question of when we use military force unilaterally and when we go multilaterally. there is no question at all that the president will want to define some of these questions a little more concisely and clearly as the process goes ahead. i thought he put together a nexus of arguments that was very persuasive on the things that he was going to concentrate on. he didn't re-- from u.s. leadership despite the comments around the world that we have. i think he made it very kler that he wants to be, put it this way, engaged in syria, perhaps in a new and somewhat different way. we'll have to wait and see how that's going to come he is finishing our kmoitment in afghanistan as he announced the day before and that certainly underlay the speech in terms of the major arguments that he wanted to make. and finally and elliott would know because he himself was deeply engaged in this effort, the democracy in human rights are part of our foreign policy. he put it in a way that i

think meshed it well with what else is being done. and i think finally he said not all problems can be solved by military forms. indeed somewhere made worse by military force. and diplomacy and development have an important role. i would think that there are details here that one could quibble about but i think overall the structure of the speep, the general message and direction was good and i think it did change a number of ideas, thoughts and attitudes that had been prevalent in this country for some time that needed to be corrected. >> stephen walt, where do you come down? >> i think the speech began in a very positive way by reminding the audience that the united states is very powerful and very secure. and that we face no direct threat of attack from any nation. i think that's very important. i think he was also of course correct to emphasize that the use of hill tear power has to be weighed very carefully, that there are many global problems where an immediate course of military force is not a good idea. and that was an important message to send to the caddettes and the american

people because there are voices who are very quick to call for the united states to use force. we should also remember that he took office after the united states had been waging two unsuccessful wars at very great cost. we should also remember that this is not been a president who has been shy about military, using military force. he just wanted to use it in a more discreet and effective fashion. that was the upside of the speech for me. the downside was i think he placed too much emphasis on terrorism. he mentioned it i think 17 times in the speech. and continued to exaggerate the danger that most americans face. americans are 35,000 times more likely to die of heart disease than from a terrorist attack. and to continue to keep our focus so heavily on that particular problem, i think, was a mistake. finally -- >> go ahead. >> finally what was missing in the speech was a clear sense of priorities. and that's, i think, been the major problem for the

administration all along. because they have continued to define american interests so broadly, they end up getting buffeted any time, any problem happens anywhere. and then get accused of not showing enough leadership. and in that sense he didn't lay out which parts of the world he cares about most, which issues are most important, ands what specific programs he's going to follow to try and defend those interests. >> clearly there's much more here than we have time to deal with unless you want to devote the whole program which i would like to do. >> but elliott abrams, come back to this point about striking the balance between intervening and not intervening. why do you think the president got that wrong? >> well, the worst moment, of course, was last sumner syria when his own advisory secretary cary, for example, wanted to intervene and the president at the last minute changed his mind. it's not so much that the balance is wrong in a particular case. it's that the president doesn't explain anything. he chose the policy on syria

yesterday by saying yeah, we are apparently going to armed rebels. for two years secretary panetta, clinton, cary said we should do that. he said no. now he changes his mind but he doesn't tell us what happened? what's the theory? what changed? i think he didn't -- >> you didn't hear that. >> he just said we're going do it but he didn't say why were they wrong, and now they're right all of a sudden. >> you are saying that is important, ambassador pickering, did you hear an explanation? >> i didn't hear an explanation but this wasn't the speech for the deep explanation of syrian policy. it was the speech to provide the united states and the rest of the world with a conceptual approach as to how and in what way we used military force in combination with other foreign policy tools to meet our objectives. i do think that he stated some objectives. the u.s. is assailed with what i would call a number of high-order second rate problems that we're dealing with. that don't affect our life,

our existence or our prosperity. but they're out there and people are looking at us. >> examples. >> in syria, of course, is one of them. iran is another one. although i might say that iran might be over time where they develop a nuclear weapon would be even higher order. but whatever that may be, i think he noted, and i disagree with stephen that terrorism is not a problem. mali, nigeria, chad, you can look around, south sudan, these are areas that have some impact of terrorism, somalia. >> not directly to the u.s. >> no, and they're not policies that affect our existence but they are policies that effect friends, allies, trading relationships, a lot of other reasons why we have been involved. >> stephen walt first and then come back to elliott i think. >> well, i agree with the ambassador, terrorism was is a problem. i wouldn't labor it a vital

threat to the united states today. but more importantly we've seen the administration swing from issue to issue. we were going to pivot to asia. then we were going to deal with the israeli-palestinian conflict. now we're going to focus more attention on counterterrorist cooperation throughout africa. what has been missing here is a sense of which issues are most important, which issues deserve sustained ascension-- attention and that unfortunately wasn't provided in this particular speech. >> coming back to the priority point. elliott abrams you're nodding. >> i just wanted to say i think one of the things that was missing which was odd at a speech av west point. the president is ple siding over the diminution over military power navy, army getting smaller. >> the end of a few wars. >> multilateralism is not going to work without american power nash, has been underwriting since 1945. he talked about nato. nato is an extension of american poer w not a substitute for american power and i don't think he

ever really con frokt-- confro confronted that in his speech either. >> nato is part of the american power issue, that without the u.s. being involved, nato isn't going to work. and we see that very, very clearly. and i think that that is important. i think that nato is very much involved in afghanistan. i think the president felt that it was time to get out of afghanistan. i think that he feels that there are many more issues that can be resolved diplomatically and he cited a couple of thoses in the speech and it's important to look at that. so i think that general shift is not towards more build up of the military but a much wider use of the military. and that's the message we ought to take from the speech, not the question of this priority or that priority. admittedly, the president came to office with a world full of priorities. and we leave the office with a world even more full of priorities despite the difficulties. and the fact that he has to deal with a number of them, or doesn't pick favorites

one time after another is an indication to the degree to which its world is interconnected and that the global prosper sit in some ways our prosperity. >> we leave this interview with a number of issues we would like to discuss longer. but we are going to leave it there. of course my colleague gwen is going to interview secretary of state cary so we'll hear more about all this tomorrow. nicholasing i'm sorry, elliott abrams, stephen walt and thomas pickering, we thank you all. >> thank you. >> thank you >> ifill: as the u.s. technology sector has boomed, women and minorities have largely been left behind. that is especially true for one familiar tech giant, google. which, along with other silicon valley companies, has increasingly been pressured to disclose its record on diversity. in a new internal report released tonight exclusively to the newshour, the company reveals although thirty percent of google's total global

workforce is comprised of women, only 17% of the workers who hold tech jobs are female. the numbers are even more stark among minorities working in the united states. latinos make up just 2% of the tech workforce, african- americans 1%. asians are more fully represented, comprising about 34%. we take a look at the significance of this for google and the wider industry, with lazlo bock, who oversees hiring at google as the senior vice president of people operations. tellie whitney, the president of the anita borg institute, which seeks to promote more women in tech. and vivek wadhwa, an entrepreneur, author and critic on these issues, who is a fellow on corporate governance at stanford university. welcome to you all. will lazlo bock, why publicize this now? >> well, gwen, to be honest, we kind of felt we had toll. you know, we hadn't shared the information in the past because we were worried about how it would look and

maybe people would look at google dichbly and quite francly we didn't think we would look good and were worried about litigation. and what we after much discussion kind of realized a number of months ago was that the right thing to do would be to share this information. because we have an issue. our industry has an issue. and the only way to have an honest conversation about this is to start by actually sharing the facts. >> ifill: you have said in the past this was a competitive reason why you didn't disclose it. there are other companies have said the same thing too. as you began to compile these number does get to the bottom of why they exist like this in item numbers were so bad? >> yeah, you know there are a number of things explaining why the numbers are actually so bad. >> part of it is if you look at women. women aren't taking loft computer science courses and the culture of the tech industry in a lot of places isn't great for women. we have been working on this at google particularly in the last year bringing more unconscious bias training for our employees for african-americans and hispanics it is even worse

it say smaller population, even fewer percentage of people from those ethnicities actually earn degrees in computer science. and the industry is that much less friendly. >> tellie whitney does this square with your investigations, your findings, your monitoring of the situation. >> well, first i want to applaud google for talking about the numbers publicly. it's really important. accountability is at the heart of change. and our top company for women in computing abbey award are enormous between 20 and 23%. which is still lower than would you want it to be. >> well, and there is even lower than that so what do you think the reasons are? well, i think it depends on where you are going to recruit, if you look at the top research universities you see about 12% women, computer science more broadly it's between 1818 and 20% for bachelor and masters, so i think reaching out more broadly to a lot more people is key to making

the change. >> vivek wadhwa, how do the numbers strike you and do you agree with the numbers behind them. >> the numbers are low and i think google can and should be doing a lot more. but as tellie says we applaud them for doing it because there is a systemic problem in silicon valley. the fact that one of the leading companies in silicon valley is now disclosing data t will put pressure on other companies to do the same. and then there will be pressure on them to fix this problem which is amazing. it will be major progress by getting this far. so i plaud google for what they did. >> ifill: let me ask you this, vivek wadhwa, we knew the numbers weren't good even though we didn't have actual numbers to put to it. why wasn't action taken before, is it just e terrible pressure. we know jesse jackson has been visiting these companies and telling them to straighten up and fly right s that what it takes? >> frankly, silicon valley is a boy's club. it's like a frat club run wild is what i often say.

because you have young kids hiring other young kids. and they don't have the sensitivity that big companies do. they don't understand the point of diversity. they don't understand why they have to be inclusive and so on. so silicon valley has it's time for silicon valley to grow up and start behaving responsibleably. goog sell a wonderful can. i don't want to criticize them here because they are doing such good things however, with minorities and women being left out -- >> as you look at these numbers is the problem in the pipeline, you talk about the number of women and minorities getting these technical degrees, or is the problem in the workplace, a hostile work environment for women and for people of color. >> well, i think there are a couple aspects. one is absolutely in the workplace. most people are not overtly sexist or racist or home phobic but we're human beings. and as a result, we like people who are like us, who watch the same shows, who like the same food, same background so we bring this

unconscious bias to everything we do. and what we see in every workplace and what we see in google is the rising that there is an impact so part of it is in the workplace. and as an employer we feel we have an opportunity to actually help people come to grips with what unconscious bias they have. more broadly though you have an educational system problem. there is an absolute pipeline problem. i remember my teen came to me one day and was ecstatic because we hired 50% of the black ph.ds in computer science one year. >> which was what, two of them. >> it was one. >> ance and the other person went to work for microsoft. in the u.s. the national science association pays .7% of phgs go to african-americans and that's not enough enough. because there are a lot of brillian-- britiant people of every color, stripe and creed. what we need to do is partner more closely with places like howard university, the college board on getting k through 12 education improved to bring more people not pipeline because we want to solve a bigger problem than just google recruiting. >> s with was a larger percentage of women ghooing the sector in 1987 than

there is now. where have the women gone? >> well, i graduated in that time period and it has gone down rather dramatically. i will tell you that we know that women leave technology at twice the rate of men. and right now there's a pretty serious image problem in terms of what we do. but there is a big change right now there are universities like-- college that has 40% women in computer science. standford and other places are making big strides. so that things are changing dramatically right now and what we really need is for companies like google to make the place, once they come work there, to stay. we -- >> vivek what wa s this true? is this characteristic of the industry? and do you accept google's reasoning for why it is? >> google is absolutel absolutely-- correct, and i said agree with as well, what happens here is that

young girls look at the tech industry, they see it being male dominated. it's like a boy's club and they feel left out so they don't entering it. when they do enter it they feel discriminated against, they get discouraged, they drop out this is what leads to the problem and why it's important for companies like google to be at the forefront of change, encouraging women to join them and then making these women friendly. and also another important thing, that in palo aalto we have-- palo aalto high school but east palo aalto high school where you have african-american and latino kids. they want to be part of the ecosystem over here with. google and other tech companies we have to recruit, teaching classes there, bringing them into the fold, giving them internships and that could cause dramatic change if they started focusing on it today. >> let's talk about what is happening now is it acceptable, mr. wadhwa, is it acceptable that we hire

people who look like us and therefore we get more people who look like us and that is the reason behind this problem growing and growing. >> it's not acceptable. i have been very vocal about it. the nookt that google is breaking ranks with the other tech companies this is a really, really significant announcement that they made. it took a lot of courage to say okay o we're going to disclose data and say that we've done wrong in the past and we want to fix the problem. they have done an amazing thing because it will shake up silicon valley like nothing else will. >> let me ask you, some people are watching this and saying so what, so what difference does it make if you have a diverse workforce as long as they are turning out the products. what difference does it make? >> well continuation makes a huge difference, what we have seen internally is teams that are diverse not just in skin color and gender but sexual orientation, any kind of way you want to look at it in terms of belief system. they come up with better ideas, more interesting things, there is interesting

research out of m.i.t. that looks at the relationship of teams homogenous and ones where you mecked in women. they found as you increase the proportion of diversity teams get more and more and more productive. >> so there is a business incentive for diversifying. >> that's what their research has found. from the google perspective we believe it's true and we believe it's the right thing to do because at the end of the day there are 7 billion potential users on the planet of our product and we're going develop the best product, if they have infuture into what we are building we understand where they are coming from. we haven't quantity find the exact output the research at mive. it is interesting and compelling. >> thank you for bringing it to us. google's vice president of people operations, love that title. and tellie whitney of anita borg institute and vivek wadhwa, standford university, thank you all. >> thank you. >> we have more on-line. see how google's numbers compare to those of other tech companies and read commentary from both tellie whitney and vivek wadhwa on how silicon valley can hire

an retain a diverse workforce >> woodruff: the head of egypt's military-led government field marshal abdel fattah al-sisi is on course for a landslide presidential victory, according to preliminary election results. however, despite the government's extraordinary means to improve the leader's vote count, many egyptians stayed away from the polls hari sreenivasan has more on this story. >> sreenivasan: joining me now to talk about the voting in egypt is borzou daragahi of the financial times. >> borzou there is little doubt on who is going to win the egyptian election but let's talk about the turn utt. it seems it was surprisingly low. >> it was recorded to be low. right now authorities are saying that they are considering it about a 44% turnout which is not as much as the election that pitted

the former president mohammed morsi in 2012 but what they consider rather respectable at this point. but they had huge troubles trying to get people out to the polls and even went through the labor of adding a voting day to the two already in place. they canceled the stock market yesterday and they closed all government ministries and urged the private seconder to release workers to let them go home and vote. >> so even with all that you are talking about 44%, is the percentage of turnout important to have what's perceived as a mandate or to legitimize the takeover which some people in egypt consider a military coup? i think it's important to some extent for domestic consumption. i think to them, to the authorities here now, it's much more important internationally to be able to point to a large turnout

to say that look, yes, maybe there are some people who oppose us within egypt but there is a plurality, perhaps who are in favor of sisi, enthusiastic about sisi so, come and do business with us. i think that is really the aim at this focus on the turnout. >> is there an international monitoring system in place for these elections? >> there is. the eu has sent 150 or so monitors deployed throughout the country, a usaid funded democracy international, i think transparency international is keeping on, an eye on the vote, a berlin based organization there are also a number of local organization os now it was interesting today democracy international issued a statement calling the extension of the votes by one more day highly irregular and said it further damaged the credibility of the electoral

process here. and it declined to deploy monitors during this third day because it was-- it considered the extension of a vote at the last minute such an egregious --. >> how do most egyptians view al-sisi. >> i think there are a large number of people in this country, there is a a large number of people who support sisi, are stridently in favor of what he represents and are just so tired of the sum ult of the last few years. and-- tumult of the last few years and eager to have a strong man, a military man come back and restore some semblance of order here, put the economy back on track. but i will say it seems like the peak of sisi mania was a couple of months ago and ever since he started speaking on the media, as his program came out or lack thereof, as his speaking style, his hectoring, pushy style came out a lot of people were turned off by that. >> all right, borzou

daragahi of "the financial times" joining us from egypt, thanks so much. >> it's been a pleasure. >> ifill: this month marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in rwanda. over the course of 100 days in 1994, a murderous ethnic killing spree took the lives of nearly one million people there. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro reports on the efforts underway even now to reconcile the rival parties. fred's report is part of our series, "agents for change." a version of this story aired on the pbs program, "religion and ethics newsweekly." >> reporter: every sunday, claude musayimana picks up his neighbor celestine buhanda on their way to church. you'd never tell from the warm traditional greeting that musayimana murdered several members of buhanda's family.

it's a friendship as unthinkable as the homicidal orgy in which hutus like musiyama took nearly a million lives among the minority tutsis, like buhanda, as well as some moderate hutus >> ( translated ): growing up, i remember my grandmother would tell me how bad they were. in 1994, when we started killing people the local leaders were supporting us i did it freely, there was no blame, no consequences. >> reporter: official broadcasts incited hutus to kill tutsis after an airplane carrying the country's hutu president was shot down, escalating a simmering civil war fought along ethnic lines. the tension dates back decades, aggravated first by belgian colonial rulers who favored the minority tutsi. that created an elite and bred resentment among the 85% hutu majority in rwanda.

in previous flare ups, churches had served as safe havens in previous ethnic flare-ups. not in 1994. they became killing chambers, in some cases with the complicity of their presumably hutu pastors. >> ( translated ): i fled to the church in ntarama. the only reason i survived is that it was so crowded we decided the men should not go in, to allow only women and children to shelter inside the church. all 5,000 women and children in the ntarama church were killed with grenades or guns. >> we were eight siblings, in all six of my siblings were killed. >> reporter: he himself survived a weeks' long flight and encounters with hutu mobs who left him with blows to the head, a severed achilles tendon and left him for dead. >> ( translated ): the killings continued until the r.p.f. arrived. >> reporter: the r.p.f. or rwandan patriotic front, an army led by exiles from neighboring uganda, took over the country.

it drove genocide leaders and millions of hutus into neighboring zaire, now the democratic republic of congo. thousands of mostly hutus were killed in reprisals. r.p.f. leader paul kagame consolidated power, became rwanda's president in 2000 and has since won two elections. >> ( translated ): after the r.p.f. came to power i fled to the south. i felt guilty about the innocent people i'd killed, i decided to come forward and tell the truth. i was arrested and put in prison. >> reporter: musayimana spent ten years in prison. like him, many perpetrators are now out and returning to their communities, an integration that would be difficult in any circumstance in this crowded country: 12 million people squeezed into a land the size of maryland rwanda's churches, so many of them complicit in the genocide, many of them the very sites

where massacres occurred, are now playing a key role in the reconciliation that's so critical to rebuilding this country. claude musayimana and celestin buhanda met in one of many small groups set up by the christian charity world vision, which brought genocide survivors face to face with perpetrators. >> ( translated ): the workshops were very important. for many years, i kept wondering what i could do to be free, to be accepted back in the village. this was an opportunity. >> ( translated ): it wasn't easy. we yelled at them at first and that allowed us to feel relief and we were able to find space in our hearts to forgive. >> reporter: today the former workshop groups serve as clubs, organizing projects to build homes for genocide survivors or run projects like this tree nursery, trying to move forward as one community, despite ever present reminders and pain.

alice mukarurinda lost not only her infant daughter, but also her right hand during the genocide. she bears a deep facial scar among other injuries. she met her assailant, emmanuel ndayisaba six years ago in this group. >> ( translated ): all those years i looked at all hutus as the ones that did this to me. and i prayed to god that if i could meet that one person i would shift the blame from all hutus to him. >> ( translated ): i saw visions of the people i killed for many years. it was painful. i was a christian, an adventist; i was in the choir. all that guilt made me sick. >> ( translated ): when i first saw him, i was so traumatized i had to be taken to hospital for ten days, it was not easy. i believe it was god's power, i

cried a lot. >> ( translated ): we have built 118 houses so far, we do the i spent eight years in prison, came out and did two years of community work. but it never feels enough >> ( translated ): the fact that we were given the time to speak out about our feelings made us feel much better. we had kept all the sorrows and pain in our heart, it was so painful.

>> so far she says her group has brought between more than a thousand pairs of genocide survivors and perpetrators but there is no escaping it will be a long journey. >> the >> the challenge is the magnitude of the genocide. it was very deep, it was awful it was very bad and you cannot exhaust it. you heal but then another day you remember another story. >> reporter: rebecca besant has been working to make sure the reconciliation keeps moving forward. she heads the rwanda office of a group called search for common ground. >> the fact that you know your neighbor killed your entire family and now you're still in the house next to them and have to see them every day. a lot of people have sort of decided i don't have a choice. and either i can let my rage absolutely consume me, or i can accept the fact that i'm not going anywhere and he's not going anywhere, and we have to make this work. >> reporter: her agency uses a reality tv show to encourage

entrepreneurs, trains journalists in a country where media were used to incite the genocide, and works in schools many of today's youth were orphaned by the genocide. others have parents in prison. through drama skits this troupe encourages students to come together as rwandans first. >> one of the things that we're really trying to encourage, for rwanda in the future, is how to talk about things before it explodes. if you've got a problem in your classroom, how do you express what that problem is and you, and you talk about it in a frank and open way. and i think that continues to be one of the challenges. >> reporter: one thing that she and others say is helping rwanda heal, is that the economy, and access to services like health care, have improved markedly in recent years. >> ifill: in our second report tomorrow, fred looks at those

improvements. his reporting is a partnership with the under-told stories project at st mary's university in minnesota. >> woodruff: finally tonight, remembering author, poet and civil rights activist maya angelou. jeffrey brown has our appreciation. >> a rock, a river, a tree. >> brown: on a chilly january day in 1993, maya angelou captured national attention and, in her own special way, the spirit of the moment, for the inauguration of president bill clinton. the poem she read, "on the pulse of the morning" became a national bestseller. >> but today, the rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, come, you may stand upon my back and face your distant destiny, but seek no haven in my shadow.

i will give you no more hiding place down here. >> brown: long before that moment, maya angelou had become one of the most respected authors and cultural figures of her generation, making a remarkable journey from rough beginnings. she was born marguerite johnson and spent much of her childhood in racially segregated arkansas. after her mother's boyfriend raped her at the age of seven, she retreated into silence for years. in 2012, at the new york public library, she remembered how books came into her life in those troubled times. >> i had been abused and i returned to a little village in arkansas. and a black lady took me to, she knew i wasn't speaking. i refused to speak. for six years, i was a volunteer mute. she took me to the library in the black school. the library probably had about 300 books, maybe.

she said, i want you to read every book in this library. it seemed to me thousands of books. >> brown: angelou became a single mother at 17, worked a variety of jobs, including at a strip club and even ran a brothel. eventually, taking on a new name, she became a singer and dancer and renamed herself. in 1969, at the urging of james baldwin, she chronicled that early life in the first of what would become a series of memoirs: "i know why the caged bird sings." it won critical praise and made her one of the first african- american women to author a best- seller. angelou used her new voice to explore the effects of racism and sexism on personal identity. one such work was her 1978 poem, "and still i rise." >> out of the huts of history's shame i rise up from a past rooted in pain i rise a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling i bear in the tide

leaving behind nights of terror and fear i rise into a daybreak miraculously clear i rise bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, i am the dream and the hope of the slave and so, naturally, there i go rising >> brown: angelou never went to college, but ultimately received more than 30 honorary degrees. she also became a prominent civil rights activist, tony- nominated stage actress, college professor and frequent guest on television shows. along the way, her life intersected, in work and friendship, with a number of other well-known figures, from malcolm x to oprah winfrey. in 2012, she spoke in a profile by p.b.s. affiliate k.q.e.d. from her home in winston-salem, north carolina.

>> friendship. it keeps you alive, it keeps you awake, it keeps you trying to be the best. and in the middle of the night when you're lonely and feel most at odds with yourself and with life and even with god, you can call a friend." >> brown: in 2011, president obama presented angelou with the presidential medal of freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. today, the president called her a "brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman." maya angelou died this morning at her winston-salem home. she was 86 years old. >> brown: with us now is elizabeth alexander, chair of the african-american studies department at yale university, and herself a prominent poet. she read an original work at president obama's first inauguration.

welcome to you, so what made maya angelou such a unique voice? what stood out for you? >> what i think was extraordinary about maya angelou's voice is that it brought together the literary you see influences from shakespeare, from dunbar, to all of those books she talked about reading, with the incredible richness of the african-american women's oral tra dismingts that motherhood, that deep understanding, that make a way out of no way, that has gotten our people so very, very far. she married those and understood that poetry was not only a written form but also a form that was meant to be spoken to be recited, to be sung. i don't think there is any writer who had a better understanding of what those two tradition together could make possible. >> and when and how did you first connect with her work? >> i read her work i'm sure when i was a child. i can't imagine that was ever not there. i'm sure that i also first

came to i know item caged bird sings. she was a prolific memoirist. she wrote six memoirs which are now together in a really beautiful modern library edition. and those memoirs, telling her life story and telling the truth about her life, telling the truth about what it meant to go from silence to telling her story, talking about the pain, talking about the struggle, talking about a history of the entire second half of the 20th century in struggle, all of that is in those memoirs. and i think that that is how most readers came to know her in the first place. >> well, and those memoirs, of course, told of a remarkable story, a larger-than-life tale. we lisd some of the things she did. and also intersecting with so many important figures and moments in that history. >> yes. and that's why i mentioned this 6 volumes all in one. because when you read it through over a thousand pages, you almost can't believe the life.

and yet it's out irly credible because she had that kind of dynamism, certainly, and that kind of profound understanding of her own voice. and that if you, as she said, have a song to sing, you must open your mouth and share it. who are you not to share that song. and i think that authenticity connected her with malcolm x, martin luther king, james baldwin and so many other people who made change. >> you of course shared that experience of writing for and ri citing at inauguration. i wonder did you ever talk to her about it. did you share that experience with her? >> well, an extraordinary thing happened. i never hit prif lige of meeting her but a faw weeks of before the inaugural after it had been announced to write the poem, she found me and called me. and the moment i heard that voice on the phone before she even said her name, i knew that voice, i knew who it was, and we proceeded to have a very beautiful

conversation which i think for her had a sense not only of kindness, i was in the those of doing something that seemed impossible, writing that poem. but also a sense of history, a sense of continuity. and a sense that as an elder it was for her to make that at any time. i asked her at the end of the conversation if she was going to come to the inaugust ram to washington and she said oh no, she laughed. she said i've done that i'm going stay at home, open a bottle of wine and i'm going to y a pottage of my own preparation. she said i will laugh, i will cry and i will sing. so it felt to me like a real benediction. >> all right, the wonderful and remarkable life of maya and lew, elizabeth alexander, thank so much. >> my pleasure, thank you for asking. >> woodruff: again, the other major developments of the day. president obama urged a

middle ground between isolation and intervention, warning that military action is not the answer to every problem. and the storm intensified over delays in veterans' health care, as the v.a. inspector general reported wait times of 115 days in phoenix, arizona. >> ifill: on the newshour online right now, we get up close with some camera-shy sea creatures. on science wednesday, we see how a photographer captured images of an antsy octopus and a common sea cucumber. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. on thursday, gwen sits down with secretary of state john kerry, as the u.s. juggles multiple crises around the globe. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. we'll see you on-line, and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us here at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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